OpenBSD might work on that laptop, testing it would be the best course of action.

As for the Nvidia graphics, unfortunately.. The only driver available for OpenBSD is xf86-video-nv(4), this is the 2D driver included with Xorg. (..the shipped driver may not support your chipset if it's very recent, a failsafe would be xf86-video-vesa(4), but that would not preform well.)

The proprietary driver released by Nvidia for FreeBSD will not work, compat_freebsd(8) is for userland binaries, not drivers.

Xenocara is the name OpenBSD developers gave to their Xorg port, perhaps you were confusing the nouveau project, this is a project with the goal of reverse engineering Nvidia graphics cards.. they already know a fair bit about the early chipsets, but no solid 2D/3D driver has come into fruition. (..and it hasn't been ported to OpenBSD yet.).

The general rule in the OpenBSD community: Avoid NVIDEA like the plague..

You could certainly try a LiveCD or LiveDVD of OpenBSD and see how it performs ... my .sig has a link to 4.4-release versions for i386 or amd64, both of which will work with the Core2Duo. (4.5-release versions are in development, and are expected to be ready on or about the May 1 -release date.)

I currently build these ISOs on a Dell Latitude D620, which is a Core2Duo with different graphics (Intel 1440x900).

It looks at first glance like the drive is recognized, but that you have blank media inserted. I didn't reply on misc@, because I'm not sure if that's the case; I'm not where I can test blank media to see if I can duplicate your symptom.

As for the bell, oh my word, there were two threads, with 24 posts, on misc@ in the last few days:

It's not any grief, and only a *tiny* bit of confusion. Mounting is for data. Files. Folders. Bits and Bytes.

A Data CD/DVD Primer (in case there is continued confusion)

While it's possible to put almost any data filesystem on a CD or DVD, the three most common data filesystems on optical media are CD9660 (by far the most common "data" disc format), something newer called UDF, and a "bridged" filesystem which is partially CD9660 and partially UDF. The bridged filesystem is used in the DVD video format.

Most data discs use CD9660 file systems, with "extensions" to support the needs of the intended OSes -- Rock Ridge for Unix and Unix-like systems, Joliet for Windows, and HFS (Hybrid) for Macs.

On OpenBSD, there is the built-in mkhybrid(8) program for building CD/DVD data file systems. I prefer the mkisofs program included with sysutils/cdrtools.